There are still a couple of months of the season left to play but Celtic may already have one eye on what they want to do in the summer transfer window.
The Hoops are already 16 points clear of Rangers in second place in the Scottish Premiership table, which suggests that it is a matter of when rather than if they are crowned champions for the fourth year running.
Brendan Rodgers' side are also through to the semi-finals of the SFA Cup after they beat Hibernian 2-0 at Parkhead in the quarter-finals of the competition on Sunday.
CELTICHIBSHIGHLIGHTS
The Scottish giants have already won the League Cup, beating Rangers on penalties in the first half of the season, and they were recently knocked out of the Champions League by Bayern Munich at the play-off stage.
This means that the SFA Cup is the last competition that they have to focus all of their efforts on to ensure that they win the domestic treble this term.
Kieran-Tierney-Arsenal-Celtic-Scotland
Celtic can then fully turn their attention to the summer window. However, they have already completed one signing, with Kieran Tierney due to arrive on a free transfer.
Kieran Tierney's plummeting market value
The Hoops have agreed a pre-contract with the Scotland international to sign him for nothing upon the expiry of his contract with Arsenal at the end of this season.
Tierney is set to return for a second spell at Parkhead six years on from his move to the Premier League for a reported Scottish record transfer fee of £25m in the summer of 2019.
kieran-tierney-celtic-career-stats-record
The left-footed defender, as shown in the graphic above, enjoyed a terrific time in Glasgow after coming up through the academy system, winning five league titles before his big-money move to The Emirates.
Unfortunately, however, Tierney's time down south has not gone exactly to plan and he is now on course to return to Celtic worth far less than the £25m they sold him for more than half a decade ago.
Kieran Tierney Market value
July 2020 £24m
October 2020 £27m
March 2023 £21m
December 2023 £15m
March 2024 £10m
January 2025 £8m
Values via Transfermarkt
As you can see in the table above, the 27-year-old's market valuation on Transfermarkt has plummeted down to just £8m, £17m less than the fee Arsenal paid for him.
Injuries have played a significant role in his declining value as a player. Tierney has missed 17 or more matches through injury in five of his six seasons since moving on from the Hoops - missing 39 since the start of the 2023/24 campaign.
His plummeting market value means that he is no longer the most valuable former Celtic academy graduate, despite being sold for a club-record fee, and record fee for a Scottish player, back in 2019.
Celtic's most valuable former academy players
The Scottish giants have produced some fantastic talents over the years, including current first-team captain Callum McGregor, but not all of them have fulfilled their potential during their time at Parkhead.
McGregor, in fact, ranks fifth in the list of the most valuable former academy players currently playing, as per Transfermarkt, at a value of £6m.
callum-mcgregor-celtic-dortmund
He is, therefore, just behind Tierney - at £8m - but there are two former Celtic youngsters, who never made a first-team appearance for the club, who are currently worth more than both of them.
|Celtic's five most valuable former academy talents|
|Player|Club|Market value|
|---|
|Andy Robertson|Liverpool|£21m|
|Aaron Hickey|Brentford|£18m|
|Kieran Tierney|Arsenal|£8m|
|Ben Doak|Liverpool|£8m|
|Callum McGregor|Celtic|£6m|
|Valuations via Transfermarkt|
As you can see in the table above, both Aaron Hickey and Andy Robertson are worth more than twice as much as Tierney and Liverpool forward Ben Doak, as well as being worth significantly more than McGregor.
The disappointing part about that, though, is that - as aforementioned - neither of them made their senior bows during their time with the Hoops, as they were cut loose before their emergence at first-team level.
aaron-hickey-brentford
Celtic may regret how things went down with those two players, as they were unable to see them fulfill their potential at Parkhead, and they may rue losing Hickey on a free transfer.
Celtic must regret losing Aaron Hickey
The Scotland international, who can play at right-back or left-back, spent four years at the club's academy before he rejected the chance to remain in favour of a move back to Hearts, where he started his youth career.
Market Movers
Market Movers
Speaking about his time at Parkhead, Hickey said: “I started off at Hearts when I was really young – I would’ve been around ten when I joined and I stayed until I was 12. Then I went to Celtic because it was my boyhood club. I went there for a good four years.
“Celtic offered me a contract, but I wasn’t playing much. I thought there would be a better opportunity for me to play at Hearts."
aaron-hickey-brentford-premier-league
This suggests that the academy chiefs at the time did not see his potential as a player, given that he was not getting the game time that he wanted, and that caused them to lose him for £0 to Hearts as a teenager.
Hickey, who was hailed as "amazing" by manager Steven Naismith, moved back to the Jam Tarts in the summer of 2018 and made his first-team debut in the Scottish Premiership in the 2018/19 campaign, before playing 22 times in the division the following campaign.
His form earned him a move to Bologna in the Serie A, scoring five times in 47 league matches, and was snapped up by Brentford for a reported fee of £14m. That move broke their club-record of £13.5m for Kristoffer Ajer, signed from Celtic.
The 22-year-old star has only played 35 times for Brentford since his move in 2022, missing 74 matches through injury, but that has not stopped his market value from soaring to £18m.
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Celtic must, therefore, regret not giving him more of a chance at youth level to progress through the ranks, as they missed out on a player whose value soared during his time at Hearts and Bologna, before being sold for millions more than Tierney is now worth.